


The Odysseus Gambit

by Eridani_Dreams



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games), Deus Ex: Black Light - James Swallow, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Biological Warfare, Biological Weapons, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Cyberpunk, David Sarif is kind of a douche, Double Agents, F/M, Loneliness, Transhumanism, more tags as I think of them
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2019-10-14 06:06:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17503055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eridani_Dreams/pseuds/Eridani_Dreams
Summary: Adam Jensen lost everything in Panchaea's fall. Can he build a new life from the wreckage of the old, or is he doomed to be merely a pawn in a game he never asked to play?(A sidequel/sequel to Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. With the addition of a few original characters, hews fairly closely to the canon.)





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Because every installment of Deus Ex starts with an Illuminati scheme...

#### ILLUMINATI COUNCIL CHAMBER, MARCH 2029

“…and the new Eliza is online and functioning within approved parameters.” Everett concluded.

“Excellent,” Lucius DeBeers said, expansively, then added, as if it were an afterthought, “Ah, and what of your efforts to retrieve the previous version?” It wouldn’t do to let Everett—or anyone else—get too complacent. A touch of honey, a well-placed goad; used appropriately, they were remarkably effective.

Everett was too experienced to let any irritation show on his face. “The source code appears to be scattered. In that state, it’s relatively harmless. It can’t re-assemble without revealing itself, and when it does, we’ll move on it. It can’t escape.”

Lucius nodded, letting him off the hook, and turned to Manderley. “Very well. Joseph, what of the task force?”

Manderley licked his lips nervously. “Ah, we’re still recovering after losing the strike team in Detroit, but the North American operation isn’t the priority. Prague HQ is almost at full strength, including the, ah, special asset you requested.”

Lucius nodded again. “Fine. We’ll follow up with that in a moment. Stanton and Volkard are in New York, working on the Human Restoration Act; Morgan, I expect Picus to build on pro-human sentiment. Subtly, mind you. Meanwhile, we also need to deal with the Augmented Rights Coalition before it becomes a real threat. Page,” his eyes turned to the red-eyed young man standing attentively behind Everett. “Activate the Ukrainian and start putting the other pieces into place. The timing on this has to be _perfect_.”

Page smiled. “I know just where to start.” His avatar flickered and disappeared, followed by Everett’s, leaving just Lucius, Manderley, and Elizabeth DuClare.

Lucius turned to the two. “So. Project Odysseus is a go.”

Manderley nodded. “Odysseus performed well on the Arizona operation; his handling of the situation has provided us an opportunity to get our own man into the Junkyard. I’ve processed his transfer to Prague, and he should arrive within the week.”

“Good. Elizabeth, who do we have to monitor him?” Lucius looked to Elizabeth, who frowned.

“I’d really prefer Delara, but she’s in the middle of another assignment and won’t be free for at least four months. Probably closer to six.”

“That’s fine,” Lucius waved a hand. “We’ll let him settle in, develop a sense of security, give the memories time to settle. That will give Dr. Auzenne a better baseline, I would think?”

Elizabeth nodded. “Joseph, I’ll send you the preliminary documentation so that you can set up Delara’s transfer. And in the meantime,” her eyes flicked over to the pudgy bureaucrat, “you’ll monitor the situation?” It was a dismissal, and Manderley took it as one. As his avatar dissolved, Elizabeth’s eyes turned to Lucius. “We already have someone in Prague covering Orlov; I’ll stretch her assignment to cover Odysseus until Delara is free. That will give us a second set of eyes.” Neither one of them trusted Manderley; he was a bureaucrat promoted above his level, with all of a mid-level bureaucrat’s failings, and his sole redeeming quality was that he stayed bought.

Lucius inclined his head toward Elizabeth. “A wise idea.”

Elizabeth hesitated. “Lucius—you _are_ aware that Odysseus runs the risk of compromising other of our operations… we’ve seen what he’s capable of.”

Lucius frowned. “Then perhaps we should arrange for something to distract him until we need his undivided attention.” A thought occurred to him. “Isn’t Violette’s daughter still in Prague?”

Elizabeth gave a guarded nod. “Yes, but we all agreed that she wasn’t a suitable recruit…”

Lucius leaned back in his chair. “Ah, but we don’t need to _recruit_ her. Feed Odysseus some selected information about her background, and he’ll be like—how did Darrow put it?—a dog with a bone. We’ll keep him busy chasing shadows until we need him.”

Elizabeth thought for a moment, then nodded again, decisively. “That could work. Violette will certainly be pleased to finally get some use out of the girl.”

There was nothing so satisfying as the ability to control his enemies’ destinies with a word. “Waste not,” he smiled.

Her answering smile was more than a little cruel. “Want not.”


	2. The Hands We're Given

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sloane has a rough night, but meeting the new neighbor might make up for it

####  **PRAGUE: MARCH, 2029**

Sloane crouched behind a decorative spire on the Týn church tower and wondered if she’d ever done anything quite _this_ mad before. Below her, the State Police were in a frenzy, pulling the last few unfortunates out of the vault where they’d been hiding. Police drones swept the area, making sure they hadn’t missed any stragglers. The police concentration on the immediate area made her hope that the tunnel to the nearby St. Nicholas’ Church was still secure. _Which would be the_ only _thing that went right this evening._

She’d gotten to the rendezvous point bare minutes ahead of a State Police raid, and the carefully planned extraction operation that had been intended to take several hours had turned into a desperate rescue. She’d concentrated on getting families with children to safety; she figured about half of the remaining people—the ones that weren’t crippled by Neuropozyne withdrawal—would scatter and disappear, and the rest… she had to accept that she couldn’t help them. It was the rational solution to the life-saver’s dilemma, but it still felt like cowardice.

 _Enough of this_. She could dither later—right now, she needed to focus on getting _herself_ out. She leaned out carefully to take another look around. The police were mostly concentrated in the open area of the square, between the church and the Jan Hus monument. Her best bet was probably to circle northeast, over the rooftops; it was out of her way, but—she heard the low whine of an approaching drone too late to duck. All she could do was activate the Glass Shield and hope. If she stayed absolutely still, the energy draw wouldn’t be too bad, and there wouldn't be any noise for the drone to pick up.

It buzzed around the tower once, twice—she held her breath as it came within an inch of her face—and was gone again. _That was too close._ She crouched, threading her way between the spires to the back of the church’s façade. She knew what she was looking for; the church was undergoing another round of renovations, and she should be able to use the construction scaffolding to make a discreet descent. Her next best option was to simply drop into an empty stretch of street, but she didn’t want to draw the attention of every cop in a three-block radius when the Icarus triggered. No, this demanded stealth—not exactly her forte, but it was that or a one-way, all-expenses-paid trip to Golem City.

With a quick, practiced move Sloane flipped over the railing, caught herself on the other side, and quietly lowered herself to the roof below. She leaned in the shadow of the tower wall and focused on her radar. Six—no, seven—drones circled the church. It didn’t look like the police were paying much attention to the rooftops, but the drone sweeps occasionally brought them into sensor range. It took several minutes of observation to unravel the pattern and reveal a gap in their coverage, and by that time, she was itching to move.

The ever-present Vltava mist beaded on the tiles beneath Sloane's feet, and in this weather, she didn’t have too much longer before it turned to ice. The seconds spun out, agonizingly slow, as the drones swept through their patrols and she waited for her window to move. When it came, she scrambled across in a fast crouch, keeping her head below the peak of the roof. Too late, she realized that the dark patch her foot had landed on was not a shadow but black ice. She caught her fall on one carbon-and-metal knee; ceramic tiles shattered and shards clattered in all directions. _Shit—!_ Three of the drones razored toward the noise; she threw herself behind a heating vent to avoid the nearest, half-rolled, half-flipped to the other side of the roof, and let the half-frozen surface work in her favor as she slid down the incline to land on the scaffold with a thump. She spotted a tarp protecting an assortment of crates, ducked beneath, and folded herself into a barely big-enough cavity just as the spotlights played over her position.

Sloane suppressed a laugh as a wild exhilaration filled her—she hadn’t felt this alive since the day she’d been blown out of the sky. It was enough to carry her through the interminable-seeming wait for the drones to return to their usual patrols, while she dodged from shadow to shadow, taking cover behind cars and dumpsters and in secluded courtyards, until she was well past the police perimeter.

It was late enough that there was no way Sloane was getting back across the tracks tonight without having to pass half a dozen checkpoints, and the last thing she wanted was an official record of her being anywhere near the Old City. She dropped into the storm drains, heading for the Red Light District. On the way, the cheap gloves and thrift-store windbreaker she’d been wearing found their way into the possession of a particularly miserable-looking homeless man. She rolled up the balaclava to look like an ordinary knitted cap, and by the time she surfaced near the Red Queen, there was nothing to connect her to the masked-and-gloved “person of interest” who’d been helping unlicensed augs escape the city.

She ended up in one of the few bars that served augs without asking questions; the décor was cheap and the booze was cheaper. By then, the adrenaline high was long gone, its ashes curdled in her gut, and the truly _wretched_ scotch wasn’t helping. All she could do now was wait for closing time, when she could get lost in the crowds heading home, and for someone to contact her in the wake of tonight’s disaster.

**ΔX**

Sloane showed her papers to the cop at Capek Fountain Station, as usual, and as usual she turned a carefully uncomprehending face to his crude insults. She made her way past sleepy commuters trying to get to the station before the lines got too long and emerged into the watery sunlight. _Finally. I need a shower_ . Her usual entrance was blocked by a large truck and several men carrying furniture and boxes up the stairs. A quick glance up when she reached the courtyard revealed that the commotion was centered on the apartment above hers. _Huh. Looks like they finally rented out 43._ She hoped the new resident wasn’t too loud; all she could see from the ground (she didn’t feel like wasting energy on enhancing her vision right now) was tall and dark.

Heading upstairs was a slow process, dodging residents who were dodging the movers who were, themselves, dodging residents. By the time she reached the third floor, Sloane was beginning to wish she’d just free-climbed the walls. But she’d just pulled an all-nighter, and it made her neighbors uncomfortable, and by the time she realized she didn’t have another good reason to take the stairs, she was already home.

Coffee. Coffee would be good, and she had just enough time for a cup and a cinnamon roll before her first appointment of the day. While she sipped at it, she tweaked her Sentinel to be a little more aggressive about cleaning up fatigue poisons (and a little _less_ aggressive about cleaning out the caffeine). It wasn’t something she did often, but after the night she’d had, it seemed warranted.

An anguished cry tore through her musings, and Sloane was out the door, trauma bag in hand, before she consciously recognized what she was reacting to. She paused at the railing, eyes scanning the courtyard below—there. Well-dressed woman near the fountain, child trembling in her arms. “ _Vyčistit cestu_!” _Make a hole!_ It wasn’t grammatically correct, but it got the point across, and her neighbors had figured out what it meant by now. She hopped the railing and dropped into the clear space below; she heard a crackle and thump behind her, but dismissed it in favor of getting to her patient.

The woman started babbling as soon as Sloane was in hearing range. “Please, you’re the doctor? I’m Marya, we had an appointment for Sofia…” Her English was accented but understandable.

Sloane nodded, sharply. “Yeah. What happened here? You were coming for routine vaccinations, right?”

“I think she had a seizure,” Marya said breathlessly. “She had such a strange expression on her face, and then she—she spasmed, and started to twitch, and...can you help her?”

Sloane was already checking the girl—Sofia—over. “I’ll do my best,” she said. “Send to file,” she muttered into her infolink, “subject is a four-year-old white female, approximately four years of age, height”—she made a quick estimate—“34 inches. BP 75 over 45, pulse 168, experiencing tonic-clonic seizure.” She reached out to take the girl, one of her hands spidering open to better support the child’s head. “Weight—36 pounds,” she said, already looking for someplace to lay her down.

“Here,” came a rough voice behind her. She turned, and saw the owner of the voice, a tall, dark man, his sharp, bearded face accented by a set of bolted-on mirrorshades. He was spreading one of the most expensive coats she’d ever seen on the ground like a blanket.

Sloane didn’t hesitate. “Thanks,” she muttered, and laid the girl down in the recovery position; he was already rolling it into a neck support. She shot him a quick look. “First-aid training?”

“BLS-equivalent,” he rumbled.

She suddenly felt a little better. “ _Fantastic_ ,” she breathed. “You just got promoted to assistant. What do I call you?”

She _thought_ he glanced up at her, but it was damnably hard to tell under those shades. “Jensen,” he said.

“Sloane,” she replied. “Ok, Jensen, I need you to monitor her airway while I check for C-spine problems.” He nodded. She snapped her hand back into its normal configuration and made a quick but deft palpation of Sofia’s spine, followed by an enhanced visual sweep. (It was like an x-ray and an MRI in a single package, and if she’d had something like this during her Army days, it would have been a literal lifesaver.) She could see the bones of Sofia’s spine, each nestled nicely against the next, none twisted or cracked or malformed. “C-spine’s clear,” she murmured. “Temperature 99.7, that’s a little high, but kids can be variable.”

She gently checked Sofia’s abdomen and extremities, but there was an unpleasant possibility assembling itself in her mind. Something wasn’t right about this scenario, and— _fuck_. Marya was, very clearly, not augmented. So the only reason she’d have brought her daughter to see an ex-Army medic working as a street doc rather than a high-end pediatrician elsewhere in Prague, was that Sofia was augmented. And put _that_ together with fever, tachycardia and seizures…she spun her vision back to enhanced mode (and that was something she still wasn’t quite used to, the feel of something _spinning_ inside her eye) and examined Sofia’s head more closely—there were the thin, spidery outlines of neural connections.

She whipped her head toward Marya, eyes relaxing to normal. “When was her last dose of Neuropozyne?” she snapped. Marya’s face drained of color, then she muttered something unintelligible and burst into sobs. Beside her, Jensen stiffened; even the shades didn’t hide the angry set of his brows. She measured the correct dose and made the injection with the ease of long practice. Neuropozyne worked fast; she watched with satisfaction as Sofia’s seizures eased and she fell into a true sleep.

Sloane stood, shoulders taut with anger, but Jensen beat her to the question. “Why didn’t she get her dose on schedule?” he asked, in a voice like an Afghanistan road. She started babbling again, a fast spate of Czech that Sloane had some trouble following even with her CASIE’s built-in translation, but she thought she got the gist of it. Jensen looked like he was having more trouble, so she provided a brief translation.

“Marya’s husband—her father—sold her Neuropozyne. Probably for a nice profit. He figured she could get by on Riezene, it’s a lot cheaper, only the supply dried up because it was tainted. He said he’d take care of it, went out of town on business and never did.” Sloane was quietly, transcendently, enraged. It was bad enough that people preyed on the augmented, but when it was a child… “And they call _us_ monsters,” she breathed. She leveled her eyes on Marya’s like gun batteries on a target, and whatever she saw in Sloane’s face made her take a step back.

“I just—I thought one of you would have some to spare, especially for a child. I—I can pay…” Marya pulled out a credit chip with one well-manicured hand and held it about two inches from Sloane.

Sloane shook her head, disgusted, but took the chip and dug out a bottle from her kit. “This,” she all but slapped it into Marya’s hand, “at Sofia’s weight, should last about two months with weekly injections. Don’t let your husband find it, because you won’t get any more from me. I don’t like being lied to.” She stooped, lifted the sleeping girl, and handed her to Marya much more gently.

Marya fled, her daughter clutched in her arms. Sloane sank down on the edge of the fountain with a sigh and looked up at her erstwhile “assistant”. “Thanks,” she said, quietly. “Not a lot of people around here are willing to step up.” She watched him pick up his coat and brush it off. He was definitely worth a second look; tall and dark, with a lean athletic strength and a positively raptorial economy of motion. She gestured at his coat before he noticed her look of appreciation. “Hope it didn’t take any damage?”

He shook his head. “It’s fine.” He looked at her for a moment, then added, “Have to admit, wasn’t expecting that on my first day here. That sort of thing happen often?”

Sloane shook her head. “No, it’s usually pretty quiet. We’re close enough to the metro that the police presence keeps a lid on things. For good _and_ ill.” She slid back to her feet, gathering up the trauma bag, then offered her hand. “Sloane Delacourt. It’s almost impossible to get emergency services or a real doctor to help around here, so I do what I can. If you ever need it.”

He hesitated a moment, then returned the handshake with a precise grip. “Adam Jensen. I just got transferred here.” Sloane noted the vagueness of the answer, combined that with all the little subtleties of body language that screamed that he’d seen action (and lots of it), and figured security job. (Probably with a vicious NDA, the kind that involved nine-millimeter retirement.)

She gestured up to her apartment. “I’m in 33; since I know you’re heading in that direction anyway, can I offer you a cup of coffee? Fresh-ground.”

Jensen stared at her for a moment, then seemed to withdraw into himself. “Some other time, maybe.”

Sloane nodded. “Fair enough. Like I said, door’s open if you need it.” On a whim, she offered him a wicked grin—she’d always been partial to tall, dark men, and a little harmless flirtation was good for the soul. “See you around, handsome.” She didn’t bother to wait for his reaction; she just sashayed off toward the stairs. The day was looking up.


	3. Check My Vital Signs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam tries to settle in to his new home in Prague, but is haunted by ghosts of past and present.

#### PRAGUE: APRIL 2029

Adam sat in a makeshift aug clinic in the sewers of Prague and tried not to pay attention to the young man who was currently burbling excitedly about the genius of David Sarif. The Collective had sworn that Vaclav Koller was the best person for Adam’s needs—indeed, the _only_ person Adam could get to with any reliability—but Adam was finding Koller’s enthusiasm a little wearing. He leaned his head back and contemplated the events that had brought him here as a distraction.

Adam usually didn’t like undercover missions, but when TF29 had needed someone to infiltrate the Pent House, a maximum-security prison for augmented people, he was the obvious choice. He’d done the job, pulled Guerrero out, but the whole thing had made him feel faintly unclean. He’d seen his share of corrupt cops in his time, and he’d always been firm in his own conviction that he wasn’t going to cross that line. Now that he himself was living a double life, he was beginning to see that it wasn’t quite that easy.

He had just gotten back to L.A. and gotten the team’s medic to remove the prison’s control biochip, when he was informed that he had been transferred to the Prague division. Jarreau had not been happy about it. The two had shared a quiet smoke on the roof, away from prying ears. “Prague’s about the last place I’d have sent you,” Jarreau said, in his usual Louisiana drawl. “It’s the front lines of the anti-augmentation movement. Putting someone like you in the middle of that—well, it’s a powder keg, and I’d hate to see a good man like you become the match.” He took a deep drag on his cigarette. “On the other hand, if that’s where you’re needed, who am I to question the wisdom of the PTB?”

“A field agent,” Adam had deadpanned, eliciting a wry laugh from his now ex-boss. He’d been on the team less than a month, and he was already missing it. He hadn’t been fully accepted, of course, but he was integrating with remarkable speed. Jarreau had been tight-lipped regarding the details of the train op, but he’d made it quietly clear to his people that Jensen’s intervention had averted a disaster, and that their comrades hadn’t died in vain. That _mattered_ to people like these. It had eased his way, and he’d been quietly grateful for that.

The Prague office was an entirely different matter. Bad enough that, while he was officially working for the head of the Counter-Terrorism unit, he could also expect to be used in a solo capacity by the Prague unit’s director. It made for a muddled chain of command, and Adam could already tell that it would cause trouble. What was the old saying, “No man can serve two masters?” Add in the Collective, and Adam had three. _Lucky me_.

Adam belatedly realized that Koller had asked him a question. “Hmm?”

“I _said_ , does it hurt when I do this?” At Adam’s headshake of negation, Koller grinned. “Excellent.” He made some minute adjustments to Adam’s arm, talking excitedly all the while. “Okay, so now I am going to show you something that is _really neat_!” He positioned the arm so that Adam could see the long, ugly scratch that marred the “skin” of the forearm and exposed the underlying metal. “Sarif work is so fucking amazing, man. Check this out.” He began to rub a bar of something gray and greasy-looking over the scratch.

“What _exactly_ are you doing?” Adam asked.

“Ahh, it’s just graphite, you gotta learn to _trust_ me! I would _never_ do anything to hurt these beauties!” Koller shifted the arm a bit so Adam could see more clearly. “Do you even know what this is?”

Adam sighed; he _really_ didn’t want to talk about it, but he also recognized that there was no stopping Koller. “Some sort of polycarbon, I think.”

“No, no, my friend, that is like calling a Maserati just ‘a car’. This is,” he paused dramatically, “a self-healing, non-Newtonian carbon nanoweave!”

Adam just gave Koller a _look_. Unfortunately, the effect was muted by his eye-shields. “I think I recognized about three of those words.”

“Okay, okay, okay,” Koller stepped back, waving his arms enthusiastically. “So, self-healing is a _tiny_ exaggeration, but give it an application of particulate carbon—you could probably even get away with the soot off a fireplace, but how low-rent is that?—and the nanoweave uses the carbon to repair itself. That’s _so awesome_!” Koller actually pumped his arms and did a little dance, presumably to express the awesomeness of the concept. “And look, if you press gently, it deforms, a lot like organic skin. But hit it with any force,” he demonstrated with a brisk tap, which bounced off a suddenly rigid exterior, “and it hardens up. Non- _Newtonian_! These Sarif 7s are really sick, and I’ve seen exactly _two_ people wearing them, I don’t think they ever hit the open market!”

Adam had been paying only partial attention, right up until Koller mentioned someone else in possession of Sarif 7s. To the best of his knowledge—which, granted, was over a year out of date—the S7s were a one-off, custom-designed for a single individual. Who happened to be one Adam Jensen. That someone else might be in possession of similar augments was a topic of intense interest to him; he couldn’t think of anyone else for whom Sarif would have built something like the S7s. A sick feeling settled heavily in his gut—there was an entire year that he couldn’t account for, couldn’t remember, and it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that someone could have copied his systems during that time, but _why_?

Adam needed to find out more. He had to tread gently, though—not only did Koller still have his arm opened up in front of him, but the slightest whiff of ‘authority’ would make the kid clam up.  Somehow, he managed to keep his voice sounding reasonably calm. “It was a pretty limited run, as far as I was aware.”

“Limited? Try fucking minuscule! And you can tell they’re a custom job, the way the proportions are so perfectly matched, the way the inlay matches her hair, it’s one hundred percent top-end Sarif, man!” Koller grabbed theatrically at his hair. “There’s nothing like it coming out of China; it’s like all that Sarif tech disappeared when Tai Yong bought them out!”

Koller didn’t know how right he was. Most of the last of Sarif’s tech had gone up in flames near the Canadian border; anything else had disappeared through the efforts of a certain nasal-voiced ponytailed hacker. _Tai Yong Medical may have stripped Sarif Industries for all its assets but I was under no obligation to make it easy to get to them._ Adam stuffed the memory back down into its box; he and Pritchard were done with each other, and he certainly didn’t _miss_ him.

Fortunately, Koller hadn’t even noticed his distraction. “—you should talk to her, she’s the one that showed me the graphite trick!”

Well, that was an opening large enough to drive a tank through. “It would help if I knew who I was supposed to be talking to,” Adam pointed out, drily.

“Doc Delacourt, right across the way! Comes over and helps out if I have a problem on the organic side.” Koller was closing up the panels on his arm. “Okay, flex that like you did before—perfect!” The tech moved around behind him. “Okay, now I need to access your cranial augs; I want to make sure that control chip you mentioned didn’t cause any degradation to your neural hub. So you’re going to have to keep your head very still, otherwise I am going to have to give you the gas.”

“I’d rather you didn’t put me under on the first date,” Adam said. He found a comfortable position for his head. “How’s this?” He took a deep breath and settled into stillness. Even during his SWAT days, he’d held less comfortable positions for longer; now, with his augments, it was child’s play.

“There is no trust,” Koller said sadly. “I get it, I get it, outside it’s all jackboots and truncheons, but here in the dungeon, we are all about trust. You can even pick a safe word if it would make you feel better.”

“You were telling me about the doc,” Adam said carefully, moving his jaw as little as possible.

“Right! All that gorgeous hardware, and brains to match! She can stop a bleeder in no time flat! Not my type, though, I am not so much for the warrior women.”

“ _Warrior women_?” Adam repeated with some amusement. He was rapidly getting the impression that Koller could keep a secret if you made it clear to him that it _was_ a secret, but he otherwise seemed to be completely lacking a brain-to-mouth filter. The innocence of youth, perhaps. It was oddly...refreshing. He made a mental note—if he needed gossip about the area, Koller was a good starting point.

Koller chattered on as he elicited strange sensations from Adam’s neural hub. “Well, I asked her where she learned to sew someone up like that, and she said something about being kicked out of planes for the Army. Which I am presuming is the American army. But it’s more that she doesn’t take any shit from anyone.” The tech’s head slid, upside-down, into Adam’s field of vision, like some weird jack-in-the-box. “Someone tried to grab her ass in the store, and she broke his hand, just like that!” He snapped his fingers. “It was the augmented hand, too. Asshole tried to get me to fix it for free, but fuck _that_!” Koller receded back out of sight. “Okay, that all looks good, you can move again.”

Adam stretched himself up out of the chair. Or, as Koller put it, The Chair. “So, we good?”

“If you’re not going to let me get a better look at those beauties…” Koller gave him a wistful look, but Adam just shook his head.

“Maybe later.”

“Okay,” Koller sighed. “I didn’t see any damage to your neural augs, which is really good, man. Those fucking TYM control chips, sometimes they aren’t too careful with the amperage. But all your systems look like they’re running fine.”

“Good.” Adam nodded. “That should be enough of a baseline for anything I need in the future.”

Koller shrugged. “Sure, man. You expect to be here often?”

Adam considered the direction his life had taken. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.” He gave Koller a second polite nod, turned, and left.

**ΔX**

Adam wandered through the streets of Překážka. The only place he had to go at the moment was an apartment that he was uncomfortable in. It wasn’t that it was unfamiliar—it was that it wasn’t unfamiliar _enough_ ; there was just enough similarity to his Detroit apartment that he always felt slightly wrong-footed. He knew the feeling would pass with time, but he just didn’t think he could deal with it right now. So, instead, he decided to get the lay of the land.

Prague was an old city. Detroit had been a city in collapse, feral and desperate, the last gasps of a city that had grown too fast, given too much, and then been abandoned to a premature death. Prague, on the other hand, had endured for a thousand years, had recreated and renewed itself through the ages. Even now, he could see the face of that renewal in small things, like a Chinese restaurant in a Renaissance-era building, and in large, like the lights of the Palisade Blades over the Vltava. Prague had been wounded by the Incident, but it refused to die, as it had refused to die before. Prague would heal, if the people behind the Incident would let it. Adam felt a strange sort of kinship with the city; he thought he’d like living here if it weren’t for the anti-aug oppression.

Even now, Adam couldn’t shake the feeling of dislocation that had plagued him since—since he’d woken up in a concentration camp for the augmented, a bare three months ago. He knew what was causing it, of course. Somewhere in the depths of Panchaea, he hadn’t just lost a year of his life—he’d lost _himself_. Or had it been earlier? When he followed Megan’s trail across two continents, only to find he’d never really known her? When he was torn apart by bullet and scalpel and reassembled as a goddamned war machine, all polymer and metal? When he had realized just how many secrets the people he’d trusted—people he’d _loved_ —had kept from him? The pieces of his life were scattered through time and space, and he wasn’t sure how they all fit together.

But here he was, a double agent for TF29, sent to ferret out the Illuminati’s secrets for the Juggernaut Collective. Adam paced the streets of Prague and wondered: between the agent and the spy, was there room for him to find just plain ‘Adam’?

He paused to buy a fresh pack of cigarettes from a little kiosk near the metro station, lit one up, and drew the familiar harshness of the nicotine into his lungs. (It faded too quickly, but he’d mostly gotten used to that.) Maybe it would just take time. At some point in the past few weeks, he’d begun to recall fragments of his dreams again as something _other_ than a dark void. It was an improvement.

As he turned his steps toward his apartment building (he couldn’t yet think of it as _home_ ), he felt the familiar tingle of the infolink, and Vega’s picture popped up. “Got a minute, Jensen? Thought you might like the low-down on your neighbors.”

Adam paused and took another drag on his cigarette. “You telling me you did _background checks_ on the other residents here? Isn’t that a bit overkill?”

“You’re a valuable asset, Jensen,” Vega replied. “The least we can do is keep an eye on you.”

Well, at least he knew where he stood with them. “Point. Okay, shoot.” He leaned against the wall to work on his cigarette while Vega filled him in. Some of it, he’d already found out on his own; most of the rest wasn’t anything he was worried about.

“…and the apartment below you is in the name of a T. Shrike. Leads back to a law office; we’re still working on that one.”

Adam blew out a lungful of smoke. “I can give you a name, there. Sloane Delacourt. Met her yesterday. Look for associations with the U.S. military.”

Vega chuckled. “The boy’s hot tonight! All right, I’ll see what I can come up with before I send it off to the rest of the JC.” He was on his second cigarette and considering a third before she came back, sounding significantly more sober. “Jensen—we might have a problem here.” She paused, then added, “Look, how much do you know about the Illuminati?”

Adam sighed. “Just tell me, and I’ll let you know when you hit something that I _do_ know.”

“Fair enough,” Vega replied. “All right. The Illuminati goes back a long way, and they still have some very—feudal—attitudes. Including—the best way I can describe it is that some of the most prominent families among them have, well, retainers. And the name ‘Delacourt’ comes up as a name repeatedly associated with the DuClares. Up until last year, a Violette Delacourt was working as Elizabeth DuClare’s right-hand woman at the World Health Organization.”

That was a name Adam knew—Elizabeth DuClare was the spokeswoman of the WHO. She had been all over Picus News just before the Incident, encouraging people to get their biochips updated. “Okay. So, coincidence or connection?”

Vega was quiet for another long moment. “Could be ‘connection’. I’ve got a Sloane Delacourt, late of the U.S. Army 10th Special Operations Group, daughter of Violette. Huh, that’s interesting. No father listed anywhere, not even on her birth certificate.”

In this day and age of ubiquitous DNA testing, that was almost unheard-of, and it made Adam’s cop instincts twinge. “Yeah, that’s odd.” He scratched meditatively at his beard, then said, reluctantly, “Can you find me a paper trail on her augments?” The mystery S7s still preyed on his mind.

Vega sounded startled. “Uh, I can try? Why do you want to know?”

Even more reluctantly, Adam admitted, “The augs I was fitted with are supposed to be one-of-a-kind. Came across some information that suggested that might not be the case.”

Vega’s voice was sympathetic. “Fuck, man, you think someone ripped off your augs while you were out of things? And that she’s wearing a copy? That’s seriously _no bueno_. Lemme see what I can find.”

Adam had time to get takeout for dinner before Vega got back to him. (He’d run out of cereal that morning.) Finally, her voice crackled back over the infolink. “So, no paper trail that I can find. Obviously, I can’t follow up on the Sarif end…”

Adam didn’t need a rundown on the fall of Sarif Industries. “Yeah, figured that.”

Vega continued, “So I had to try the other end, but the clinic where the work was done burned down in the riots last year. Most of the staff was caught inside.” Adam winced. He’d seen a lot of ways to die, but to be burned alive ranked among his darker nightmares. “The interesting thing _there_ is that it was a private clinic, owned and operated by Violette Delacourt.”

“The mother,” Adam said.

“The very same. So that’s a dead end. Plausible, but…” Vega trailed off.

“But we already know how the Illuminati likes to use dead bodies to hide other things,” Adam concluded.

“Yeah,” Vega agreed. “On the other hand, it looks she’s been living here for about a year, so unless the Illuminati has developed the ability to see the future, she probably isn’t here for _you_.”

“Still, there’s _something_ there,” Adam decided. “Too much smoke, not enough fire. I’ll see if I can’t do some digging once I get settled in at TF29.”

“Roger that,” Vega said. “If you find anything interesting, pass it on to me.”

“Yeah,” Adam said thoughtfully. And, he thought, _he’d_ be the one to decide what was ‘interesting’. He didn’t trust the Collective as far as he could throw them, but for his current purposes, they were the only game in town. “I’ll do that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Green Day, "Boulevard of Broken Dreams"


	4. My Daughter’s Father

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> David Sarif reaches out to the daughter he's never known, and finds out that she's more than he bargained for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because it's been so long, I decided to make this a two-fer, and drop Chapters 3 and 4 at once. I'm making good progress on the next few chapters, so hopefully I'll be able to have a more normal posting rate after this!

**BOSTON: MAY 2029**

David Sarif idly paged through the information on his desk display, but he wasn’t really paying attention to it. He didn’t need to; he’d been compiling this dossier for almost thirty years, and he was intimately familiar with its contents: the life of his daughter, observed from afar, recorded by proxies. He sighed, and dismissed it all with a wave of his hand. It wasn’t enough. He’d hoped after Sloane had recovered from the augmentation surgeries that she’d contact him, but as the months went by in silence, his disappointment had grown. Only recently had it occurred to him that Violette might never have told Sloane the truth—if that was the case, now that Violette was dead, there was nothing preventing him from telling her himself.

Nothing—except his own uncertainties. Would she hate him? Blame him for abandoning her as a child? Her relationship with her mother had been rocky at best—would she resent _any_ expression of parental interest? David simply didn’t know, couldn’t predict, and that left him unusually uncertain—a state he had little experience and less patience with. He leaned back in his chair, tossing a baseball gently up and down, finding comfort in the familiar rhythm.

“Just make the call, David,” he muttered to himself. “There’s no point in putting it off.” His fingers closed around the baseball and set it gently on the desk as he checked the time—1:30. He had a meeting at 2; thirty minutes was surely enough for a first conversation, and it offered a graceful means of escape if necessary.

Her smart home answered the call; he was already shifting mental gears to leave a message and move on when, abruptly, the outgoing voicemail broke off and the connection went through. He was so surprised, all he could do for a moment was drink in the sight of her.

Copper hair tumbled to her shoulders, the product of some genetic alchemy that David couldn’t explain. The eyes, though, the eyes were recognizably his. Was it as odd for her, seeing her eyes in a face not hers, not a mirror's reflection but something more indefinably organic? (And yet not organic, because his eyes, like hers, were retinal implants, but they were still the same color. He’d chosen them himself, the precise gray-hazel he saw in the mirror every morning, only distinguished by the ring of copper rather than gold.)

She had his grandmother’s jaw, strong and stubborn, and he absently wondered if she’d inherited the legendary temper that had accompanied it. The cheekbones, high and sharp, could have come from either parent, but the dimple in her chin was definitely a maternal inheritance—as was the straight Grecian nose. He was absurdly glad she hadn’t inherited _his_ beak of a nose; it would have turned a strong face, full of character, into something much harsher.

God, he did good work, both biological and mechanical.

His daughter raised an eyebrow as he stared at her in silence, and when she spoke, it was in a low, slightly rough contralto. “Is there a reason you called?” She seemed unruffled, as if she had tech billionaires calling her up on a regular basis, but his CASIE identified the subtle pupillary dilation and faint shifts of body weight that suggested she was just as nervous as he was.

“I,” he said, and paused, because just how was he supposed to say “ _I’m your father…_ ” without making it sound like an old movie reference? “I don’t know if you know who I am…”

She brushed her hair out of her face. “You’re David Sarif,” she said, meeting his gaze. She looked away for a moment, then back. “You’re my biological father.”

David took a deep breath. “Violette told you?”

Sloane shook her head. “I found out after she died. It was on the genetic augmentation compatibility tests.” She tilted her head, eyes narrowing. In a carefully neutral tone, she added, “You never told me, either.”

“No. The situation was…complicated.” The baseball was back in his hand. “She was supposed to tell you when you were eighteen, let you make your own decision. Obviously,” he turned the baseball around and around, “she didn’t.” An uncomfortable silence fell for several moments before he asked, “Did she ever say anything about me?”

She raised both eyebrows; evidently, she hadn’t been expecting the question. “Not by name, obviously…” She hesitated, then added, reluctantly, “She said it was an accident. And that you didn’t want kids.” She gave him a wary look as she finished, and David decoded that without difficulty as, _you didn’t want me._

“That’s—as I said, it was complicated, but…” He tossed the baseball up and down a few times, gathering his thoughts. “I’m not entirely comfortable speaking ill of the dead, you understand, and this is entirely from my own perspective…”

“‘To the living, one owes respect’.” To his surprise, Sloane quoted Voltaire. “‘To the dead, one owes only truth.’”

Sarif raised an eyebrow, impressed. “The truth, then. The truth is that, in retrospect, I’m not certain how much of an accident it was. She was brilliant, you understand, and I wanted her at my side when I built Sarif Industries. We could have done such great things together…” The echo of that long-ago pain reached up and clenched his heart. “But it seemed like she had some sort of agenda she wasn’t telling me about. We—I can’t say that we had arguments, because she just—wouldn’t engage, wouldn’t listen, she just went on as if she was right.” He could see from the look on Sloane’s face that she was familiar with that trait. “The day you were born, she gave me an ultimatum: start doing things her way, or I’d never see you again.” He sighed. “I was on the fence. If she’d given me a little more time, I probably would have given her what she wanted. But she wanted me to decide right then—her way or no way.” He sighed. “She even changed your middle name.” At her look of surprise, he clarified. “It was supposed to be Salome, for your great-grandmother.” The same one whose jaw she’d inherited.

His daughter’s eyes widened, and she sounded like she was going to choke. “ _Salome_? Jesus, did either of you ever go to public school?”

David couldn’t help but laugh. “I admit, we weren’t really thinking of that at the time.” He rubbed his forehead. “Ah, do you generally use—”

“‘Sloane’,” she said firmly.

David nodded. “Whatever you prefer. Sloane…” He rubbed his hand over his face. “I know I haven’t been part of your life up until now, and I’m not here to interfere. I just…I wanted you to know. And, if you're willing, to get to know you a little better. Maybe establish some sort of relationship.”

Sloane tilted her head curiously. “Are you the reason I ended up with a king’s ransom in augmentation hardware?”

He nodded. “I wouldn’t put it that way, but…yes. I, ah, found out that you were hurt, and…”

“These are custom jobs,” she observed. "This never came off a production line."

David had never been able to contain his enthusiasm when it came to his creations. "Mass-market? For _my_ daughter? Absolutely not! Most of the internal components were part of a specialty run I'd done a couple months before, and I cast the outer shell of the arms and legs to precisely match your own biometrics. Built to military specifications, of course, I didn’t expect you to retire from the Army..."

“It wasn’t my idea,” Sloane’s voice was dust-dry. “I guess after the Incident they thought I was a security risk.”

“There was a lot of that going around,” he sighed. “But with your skills and augs, you shouldn’t have any problems finding work; there’s Dynacorp, Ironflank, Sharp Edge…”

“No.” She folded her arms behind her back in a military-looking posture. “I won’t work for mercenaries. I’ve spent too much time cleaning up what they leave behind.”

“Surely, that limits your options,” he said. “The restrictions on people with military augmentations—”

She gave him a challenging look. “Are you thinking of taking them back?”

“What?” David yelped. “No, of course not, I wouldn’t do that!” He was off-balance again; the conversation wasn’t going the way he’d expected.

“Good. I’m coping with the restrictions, and I’ve got some feelers out for jobs that won’t make me want to scrub my skin off with bleach. I’m not worried yet; I’ve only been running at one hundred percent since about the turn of the year.”

That, in David’s experience, was a remarkably short recovery period. The only person he’d seen recover faster was Adam, and he was special in so many ways. Of course, he’d ensured that she had an advantage in that regard. “You’re fully recovered, then? Usually it takes a couple years. Sometimes even three.”

Sloane shrugged. “Most people aren’t trained to push themselves through pretty much anything. I am, and I’ve rehabbed injuries before. I know my limits better than anyone else.” Again, that shrug. “Makes a difference.”

“Remarkable,” he breathed. “Absolutely remarkable. You’re even more impressive than the rep—than I anticipated.”

“Than the reports said?” She had a sardonic glint in her eye.

“Well, yes, but that’s hardly—"

She looked up at the ceiling, then back at him. “I’m not stupid, Sarif. Violette wouldn’t have asked you for help, which means that you were keeping an eye on me for your own reasons. Given what she was like, I’m even willing to grant that you had the best of intentions. And I’ve had security clearances, which were their own special kind of invasive.”

“Oh,” David said. “Well, I’m glad to see you’re being reasonable about—"

Her voice grew hard. “And it ends now.”

 _How dare she—!_ David’s eyes narrowed, and he said, in the kind of tone that sent most men running, “Is that an ultimatum?”

Sloane stared him in the eye, unflinching. He had to respect her for that, despite his outrage. “Call it a condition, if you like. You want a relationship with me, I’m willing to give it a shot. But it has to be an actual relationship, in which I have the choice to share things or not. You don’t get to be a voyeur into my life anymore.”

“It wasn’t like that!” he sputtered. “It was the only way I could get to know you!”

“Then,” she pointed out with ruthless logic, “you don’t really need it any more, do you?”

Sarif gritted his teeth. “You sound just like your mother.”

Sloane’s jaw set and the copper in her eyes glowed molten. Almost absently, David thought that he had the answer to his question, she had very much inherited the temper that went with the jaw. “The _fuck_ you say,” she snarled. “This is _my_ life, and you will respect it as such, and if you can’t handle that, then go the fuck away and that spot that says ‘Father’ on my birth certificate can stay empty!”

Pride threaded through his anger. There weren’t many people who could stand up to him like that. “Okay,” he said, holding up his hands in a placating motion. He could give it a try. If it didn’t work out, he could always start the surveillance back up again; he’d just have to be discreet about it. “Okay. You win this one.”

She took a deep breath, and the CASIE reflected the reduction in blood pressure as she controlled her temper. “I mean it,” she said quietly. “I had enough of Violette trying to pull my strings when I was growing up. I’m not gonna let it happen again.”

“I understand,” David said, as conciliatory as he could manage. “You’ve made yourself entirely clear. I’ll pull the surveillance today. My word on it.” It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been warned—Radford had said, right there in his notes, that she was one of the most stubborn people he’d ever seen.

 _Just as stubborn as Adam,_ he thought, and then a wild idea came to him.

“You know,” he said, as casually as he could manage, “if you ever need a hand with anything, there’s someone I know in Prague. My old security chief. He’s a good man—”

His secretary popped his head in. “Mr. Sarif? Mr. Brown’s on the line for your two o’clock…”

“Dammit!” Why had he thought that a mere thirty minutes would be enough? “Sloane, I’m sorry, I have to take this—”

She nodded. “You’re in the middle of your workday. If you want to schedule another call, I’ll make sure I’m available.” She tilted her head thoughtfully. “It was…interesting…to meet you.”

“We’ll talk again,” David promised.

“I’m sure,” was her dry response, and then she cut the call.

It was with something very like relief that he turned back to business.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from Gord Bamford, "My Daughter's Father". Chosen for maximum irony.


	5. Sore Afraid New World

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sloane pursues a private agenda, and inadvertently uncovers a new threat from an old enemy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING!!! This chapter contains scenes of violence, illness, blood, gore, the result of serious illness, and generally has a high horror content. If you have problems with that, please jump to the bottom notes for a TL;DR.

**PRAGUE: MAY 2029**

Sloane dropped into the Prague undercity with a sense of exhilaration. The abandoned LIMB clinic had been mostly untouched by the fires from the riots; half-buried by its neighbor’s collapse, it had been abandoned as unsafe. It had been a risk—she’d narrowly avoided a complete collapse of the unstable structure—but the reward had been worth it. Her duffel was satisfyingly full, and not just of the pharmaceuticals that would ease the lives of any number of people. She’d uncovered something even more valuable—OSDs of clinic records from the period surrounding the Incident. She knew better than to hope for the big break that would lead her right to those responsible, but even small clues could add up into something substantial. She’d spent over a decade hunting down the bad guys, terrorists big and small, and whoever was behind the Incident…she had a feeling that they were the biggest terrorists she’d ever gotten her teeth into. And that meant that they were correspondingly dangerous.

Sloane grinned to herself. _If the game were easy, anyone could play._

She made her way through the warren of storm drains, sewers, and buried medieval streets that made up Prague’s underground. It wasn’t as storied or extensive as the Parisian catacombs, but it had its own charm--not least of which, the PCR rarely came down here, which made it a convenient way to avoid checkpoints and other random harassment.

She was halfway home when she noticed the scent of decomposing human flesh; as indescribable as it was unmistakable, it was enough to stop her in her tracks. If the stench was anything to go by, there were multiple bodies, and they’d been down here for some time. It probably came from one of the makeshift camps that Prague’s homeless were resorting to. It wasn’t the first time she’d come across a body in the underground, and she’d developed a routine: give the body (or bodies) a brief investigation, make a note of the location, and call it in anonymously to the Public Health Institute. (She’d tried calling it into the PCR once, and the body had remained for days. Thankfully, it had been winter.)

She found a spot to cache her spoils, considering the situation. The two most obvious causes for a number of bodies lying around were gang violence—likely, someone pissing off the Dvali—or bad drugs. There were a couple of jackleg drug labs down here in the undercity, and who knew what kind of chemical cocktails they were cooking up. The third possibility was, to her mind, less obvious but more frightening—disease. Tuberculosis burned through the Indian subcontinent, AIDS was making a comeback, and she knew all too well about the horrors coming out of Russian labs with names like _Vector_ and _Biopreparat_. So she took her usual biosafety precautions: gloves, mask, goggles, a little bit of Vicks under the mask to help counter the smell.

It wasn’t enough.

The wall fell away into a ragged opening that showed recent tool marks, barely wide enough for a single person. She edged through, and pulled up short as her boot came down on something that crackled wetly. Giant roaches carpeted the ground, rippling in sickening gyres. Where the light touched them, they tried to skitter away, succeeding only in breaking free of one whirl and joining another. She swallowed her gorge, reached down with a gloved hand, and picked one up. Its abdomen was swollen almost to bursting; its right-side legs flailed wildly, while the others barely twitched. She shuddered and let it fall to the ground—what the hell could give a _cockroach_ a _stroke_?

Every instinct screamed at Sloane for her to turn and run. She clenched her jaw and let her training take over, and shoved the screaming in her head down where it wouldn’t interfere. (She’d pay for it later—she always did.) She’d been right; it had been bodies, plural. She thought there were ten—maybe twelve—of them, all crammed in the pathetic little squat that they’d tried to make into some semblance of a home. There were no signs of violence, no bullet holes in the ancient brick—it looked like they’d all died in their beds. They were all well-advanced into decomposition, bloated and distorted, foam encrusted around blackened lips, so much so that one body blended into another. From her vantage at the entrance, she couldn’t make a reliable count—they all seemed to blur into one giant mass of ruined humanity.

The stink was concentrated here, penetrating the pores of the rough-worked stone walls and floor. It was voided bowels and putrefying flesh overlaid by the pungent, oily musk of the roaches, with finishing notes of ammonia and something that smelled not like the usual heavy, sweetish rotting-pork-and-soured-milk smell she was used to, but sharper, hotter, almost burnt. It wasn’t the scent she expected, and a warning jangled up her spine. She needed a closer look.

Sloane made her cautious way to the nearest body, clearing the roaches away with the light where she could and the edge of her boot when she couldn’t, and she saw what had attracted them. Blood. It had soaked the tattered blankets and flattened cardboard, and she could see where the roaches had torn holes in their rush to devour. It had spread thinly and dried in a rusty stain on the stone--dried, but not coagulated.

She squatted to look at the body, as close as she could without stepping in the dried blood. Up close, she could see movement around the eyes, the flash of aged ivory that told her the flies had been here. And yet, even the maggots looked—sluggish. She used the blunt end of a surgical probe to gently push back the swollen eyelid and investigate the writhing mass—a sizeable number of them were dead, and the sclera of the eye underneath was a dark, malevolent red. The skin—the skin was unnaturally smooth, and in the dim light, looked almost black. As delicately as she could, she pressed her fingers against its face. The skin crackled and split, sliding greasily along the cheekbone, and sliming her glove with uncongealed blood.

Sloane knew what she was dealing with now, though she’d never seen a patient that presented with these symptoms. Hardly surprising, considering the disease had been dead in the wild for fifty years. “Oh, holy fucking shit,” Her voice echoed over the rustling of the roaches, in the metropolitan French that she’d picked up as a teenager, and sometimes slipped out when mere English wasn’t enough to express her feelings. “ _Espèce de malade_ , you brought it _back_ , you fucking idiots brought it back!”

 _Smallpox_. And not any smallpox, but the hemorrhagic variant that was almost invariably fatal.

Sloane moved quickly but methodically. Poxviruses in general were only ranked BSL-2; they were _large_ viruses, primarily transmitted through inhalation. Her boots and clothes would be a complete loss, but masks, gloves, and goggles were otherwise sufficient protection. That didn’t mean she was going to extend her exposure; whatever samples she wanted, she needed to take _now_. She wasn’t coming back in here once she was gone. Tissue and blood samples, exemplars of the roaches and maggots, samples of drug ampoules and even a couple Neuropozyne vials, one half-empty, and one that looked untouched. If she was _very_ lucky, one of the things she brought out would point a finger at where the disease had come from.

She edged her way back out of the narrow crack in the wall and stripped down to her underwear, tossing the contaminated clothes back through the hole. She shivered as the cool air hit her skin. Bare feet crunched on the ground, and she wasted no time in heading back to the abandoned LIMB clinic. It had the means for her to decontaminate herself, and if she could get its backup generator up and running, she might be able to do some simple tests in their lab.

While she backtracked, she put a call through her Infolink. “What do you want?” Kazatel didn’t waste time on niceties.

Sloane didn’t, either. “I need three—no, four—standard smoke grenades, four mine templates, and a kilogram of formaldehyde crystals.” She knew Kazatel wouldn’t be the one actually making the trade, but he had contacts everywhere, and didn’t mind playing the middleman if there was a profit to be made.

“Three vials of Neuropozyne.” Kazatel didn’t hesitate.

“Highway robbery,” she retorted. “Fine. Leave the goods in the safe in the old visitor center, the usual code. I’ll leave the Neuropozyne there when I make the pickup.”

“Twenty-four hours,” he said, and cut the connection.

If Kaz came through, that would take care of decontaminating the site. (She wasn’t about to leave this one to the Public Health Institute.) It was a trick she’d picked up years ago—a smoke mine with about three-quarters of its filler replaced with formaldehyde was hands-down the most efficient, controllable decontamination method she’d ever come across. Four mines might be a little overkill for that small an area, but better safe than sorry.

Several hours later, Sloane was ensconced back in the abandoned clinic, thoroughly decontaminated, and was hard at work. She deeply missed her Army gear; she’d had a hand-held sequencer designed specifically to identify biowarfare agents. If she still had it, she’d be done already. Instead, she had to make do with what she had. The lab had been designed for surgical support and biopsies, but it did have two things she could use: a basic gene-sequencer and an electron microscope. The second had allowed her to confirm her diagnosis; variola was a _very_ distinctive virus, and the blood and tissue samples were positively _swarming_ with it. Now, using the known infected sample as a control, she just had to run all the samples through the gene-sequencer. With that and some basic data crunching, she could determine whether the dead had all been infected with the same strain, and maybe get a hint of what the infection vector had been. It wouldn’t be a smoking gun—although the drug ampoules were all single-use, cross-contamination was always a possibility—but any direction was better than none, and the more information she could hand off to—whoever—the better.

Finally, she reached the last sample, the intact vial of Neuropozyne. She pulled it out of the baggie and frowned; she hadn’t noticed in the dim light of the catacombs, but in the brighter illumination of the lab, it was clear that it had been tampered with. The bright orange rubber flange along the top was gone, replaced by a darker orange substance that looked like sealing wax. She turned it around in a gloved hand, looking for some other clue—and it was there, a simple design impressed into the wax. A single drop of liquid overlain by a trio of dashed lines, identified with Greek letters.

Sloane’s hand began to shake, and with a distant part of her mind, she admired the engineering that had gone into the simulated human reaction, while, with the rest of her mind, she tried to reject what she was seeing. The last time she’d seen that emblem had been almost two years ago…

**SOMEWHERE OVER CHECHNYA: SEPTEMBER 2027**

Duran Duran thundered over the tannoy. It was almost loud enough to drown out the drone of the VTOL’s engines, but definitely not enough to drown out the cheerful banter among the twelve soldiers in the back. Operational Detachment Alpha 0113, First Battalion, 10th Special Operations Group, affectionately nicknamed the “Wild Boys”, was heading into action.

First Sergeant Sloane Delacourt walked down the middle aisle, doing one last check on the troops while Mama Bear, Top and Eyeball did their last-minute huddle over the operations plan. Something bounced off her forehead, and she caught it without looking. “Jablonski,” she bellowed, “what have I told you about these damn Hogwarts jellybeans?”

“What you eat now, I eat later, First Sergeant!”

“That is correct!” She popped the offending jellybean into her mouth, made a considering face. “Earthworms, Jablonski!” she announced to scattered laughter. She moved on to where Martinez fretted over having to postpone his wedding. “Look, Luis,” she said, reassuringly, “Eddie _isn’t_ going to run away from you. Before we left, I shot him in the leg.” At his look of mock-horror, she grinned. “It’s okay, just a flesh wound, he’ll be all healed up by the time we get back. That’s what a best woman does, right?” She clapped him on the shoulder. It was a reassuring routine: a word here, a laugh there, and she dropped into her own seat just as the music trailed off.

“All right, people,” rumbled Eyeball, the team’s second in command. “Twenty minutes to drop. Mama Bear’s going to go over the ops plan one more time.”

The monitor behind Captain “Mama Bear” Hawthorne flickered on. “Sergei Ivanovich Lermontov, ladies and gentlemen,” she said. The man on the screen was tall and well-built, with cruel blue eyes, hair somewhere between blond and brown and a face that looked as if it had been chiseled from granite. “Former high-level operative for the GRU. He’s rumored to have been instrumental in ‘convincing’ Georgia and the Ukraine to become part of the new Russian Federated States.”

“We all know that the RFS has been sponsoring terrorist organizations in the former area of influence of the Soviet Union, pretty much since the Wall came down,” Master Sergeant “Top” Thompson, the team’s primary intel specialist, rumbled. “Lermontov’s name has come up in connection with a new group that’s come up on our radar. He’s gathered up the remnants of the Shadow Wolves—” a nasty Russian nationalist group that had been all-but-wiped out several years before, “—and he’s been recruiting a bunch of his former buddies and ex-Spetznaz, all real hard-line nationalists. They’ve set up shop in Pripyat, and our intel suggests that the exclusion zone guards are running interference for them. They’re calling themselves the Liquidators, after the Chernobyl liquidators.”

As the team’s Russia specialist, Sloane had contributed heavily to the intelligence analysis for this mission. “And the disaster they’re ‘liquidating’ is the wholesale loss of Russian influence over Soviet breakaway states and former Eastern Bloc satellites,” she added.

Top nodded. “Right. Our intel suggests that the Liquidators have been in contact with this man: Oleg Grigorovich Sokolov, late of Biopreparat. They’ve made arrangements to acquire a large amount of weaponized anthrax, which they intend to use on the city of Grozny.” He tilted his head in Sloane’s direction.

“The Third Chechen War has been a bleeding wound in Russia’s southern flank for the past several years,” Sloane said. “Not least of which because the Chechens have been getting clandestine support from some of the other breakaway states. So Russia’s using their own deniable proxy to hit the Chechen capital with a bioterror attack in the hopes of ending the war once and for all.”

“And that, ladies and gentlemen, makes it ours,” said Mama Bear. (ODA-0113 specialized in biowarfare and medical terrorism.)

“We’re gonna be playing this one a little by ear,” said Eyeball. “The meet is taking place in the town of Tsa-Vedeno, up in the foothills.” An aerial photo of a small town at the junction of two rivers popped up on the screen. It would have been lovely, Sloane thought, if it hadn’t been hard-used by several years of civil war. “These farms here,” he indicated an area west of the town proper, “are mostly abandoned; the transfer is going to take place here, at 0130Z. We are making a HALO insertion; primary DZ is this clear area here, about a click west of the city. Secondary DZ here, south of the primary. We land at 1810Z. We need to have that meet location locked down by—”

The VTOL shuddered, lights flickering, and the pilot’s voice came over the intercom. “We’re experiencing some engine trouble. Descending to 20,000 feet.” That would bring them into range of Russian air-defense systems. Sloane hastily fastened her oxygen mask as the VTOL lurched again. The alarm gave three short, sharp rings, the jump light burned green, and Thompson barely had time to signal “Bailout” before the VTOL’s violent tilt knocked him off his feet. Martinez fought to get the rear door open. The altimeter spun downward, they crossed into missile range, and suddenly they were out of time.

The tail of the plane exploded; the fireball took Thompson and Martinez and sprayed the nearby soldiers with shrapnel. Sloane ignored the fire in her cheek and staggered to her feet as the VTOL leapt under the impact of a second missile. She bounced off the ragged edge of the airframe and her ruck caught on the jagged metal, slamming her against the side of the plane. It spun wildly out of control, dragging her behind it in a parody of free-fall. She scrabbled frantically for the pack release—felt her fingers close on it for just a second before the g-forces pulled her hand away. The second time, she was more fortunate; she freed herself with a rough yank and shoved herself away from the dying aircraft seconds too late to avoid the incoming airburst. The lethal blossoms of light ripped into her, and the world dissolved into fire and darkness.

**ΔX**

Sloane faded in and out of consciousness. Her chute was caught in a mass of branches, and she was badly tangled in the shrouds. In her lucid moments, she took stock of her condition. Her right leg was broken in at least two places, her left arm was so badly tangled that she couldn’t feel it at all, and her suit’s auto-tourniquet had clamped down on her left leg. Her left eye felt like it was glued shut, and every time she moved her head, pain bloomed in her face. It took her several tries before she realized that there was no leg there for her to see; something had torn it off above the knee, and only the tourniquet had kept her from bleeding out.

 _There went my plan to walk out of here._ The thought struck her as inescapably funny. She giggled helplessly in a reaction to pain and blood loss, until the darkness dragged her down again.

Fingers on her savaged cheek bring her to consciousness with a soundless scream. The blurry form in front of her turns and yells something that sounded garbled and strange for a moment until her brain catches up and parses it as Russian. “<<This one’s still alive!>>”

Time’s funny. She isn’t sure if it’s a second or a moment—it just _blips_ and someone else is standing in front of her. This one, she recognizes. Three inches from one of her targets, and she’s down to one eye and a semi-working arm.

But, hell if she can take him down now, his men will probably kill her quickly. Better than this slow bleeding out.

Lermontov’s saying something—too much work to try and parse it right now. _Keep talking, asshole._ Focus. Knife, right under her fingertips. Concentrate on easing it out so they don’t notice, they don’t hear, and they don’t, in the first goddamn thing that’s gone right on this mission (don’t jinx it, Sloane). The world’s a knife in her hand and Lermontov’s ice-blue eye. Eye’s a chancy target but he’s wearing armor, she has to make it work.

He takes her face in his hand. Turns her good eye to face him. Speaks English, now. “Anything to say for yourself, little she-wolf?”

No way she can resist a straight line like that. Her voice is a husk, a shadow, but it does the job. “ _Do svidanya, suka._ ” She brings the knife up with all her remaining strength, the arc of it pure and true, and then he moves back a hair’s breadth and it’s not enough, she’s not quite fast enough and the blade bounces off his cheek and gouges a bloody furrow across his nose and forehead.

He takes it away from her before she can put it to her own throat. His men are baying for him to kill her. “<<I have a better use for this one,>>” he announces. Cold steel against her face, toying with her with her own knife. The blade _taptaptaps_ against her face. She can’t keep from flinching away from it. Weak. Tries not to despise herself for it, the medic fighting the soldier. “<<Keep her alive, if you can. Leave her at the consulate in Grozny. We’ll send a message to the Americans that they shouldn’t send a little girl to fight a man’s war.>>” She’d kill him for that, if she could. But her strength is puddled on the ground beneath her and all she can do is watch as that cold shining steel rises toward her good eye and it’s pain and fire and this time she gives herself to the darkness…

**PRAGUE: MAY 2029**

The soft scream of glass stressed to its limit snapped Sloane back to herself. Her body throbbed with the echo of remembered pain. Carefully, she disengaged her fingers one at a time so the vial didn’t shatter in her hand.

The Liquidators. She’d just assumed that someone took care of them after Thirteen’s failure, but—that hadn’t been long before the Incident, and the Incident had fucked everything up. It seemed that Lermontov taken advantage of the world chaos to dig in, find a niche, and prosper. And if that were the case, she couldn’t deal with the situation alone. No matter how much she wanted to be the one to bring him down, no matter how much she owed it to her dead.

She needed to call in help. And maybe, just _maybe_ , this was a way for her to get back in the game again.

Sloane ran down her sadly-truncated list of contacts. SOCOM was out; scuttlebutt was that they’d closed down Stuttgart in early ’28—well, what did they expect after the U.S. pulled out of NATO?—and she wasn’t talking to them anyway because of the way they’d retired her while she was still comatose. The few old Army buddies that had survived the Incident were either not talking to her or had gone merc, so either way they were a dead end. She flipped through a couple more names, then scrolled back. It hung there, superimposed on her vision. _Stefan Gerber._ Stefan had been SOCOM’s liaison from the BND, back in the day. They’d dated once, the chemistry hadn't been there but the friendship was, and last she’d heard, his brother was climbing the ranks in Interpol. That might be fruitful.

She checked the time. 9AM. “ _Guten Morgen_ , Stef, it’s Sunny. Yeah _,_ I’m still in Prague, and no, it’s not nearly as nice as it used to be. Listen, I came across something that needs to get official notice. You remember a Russian group calling themselves the Liquidators…?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title, of course, from Duran Duran, "Wild Boys".
> 
> Summary for those who skipped: Sloane finds a bunch of OSDs in pursuit of her private agenda of hunting down those responsible for the Aug Incident. On her way home, she comes across some dead bodies, and determines they were killed by weaponized smallpox. She follows up, and discovers that the disease was spread by tainted Neuropozyne. The organization responsible, the Liquidators, are also the ones responsible for the loss of her Special Forces team two years ago, and the injuries that resulted in her augmentation. Sloane follows up with one of her old contacts to make sure that someone's apprised of the new threat.


	6. Back in the Clubhouse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adam finds an unexpected ally within TF29, and is assigned to follow up on rumors of a bioweapon used by a new terrorist group. But when his investigation leads back to the Illuminati, he must follow up on the potential threat in his own backyard...

**PRAGUE, JUNE 2029**

“Agent Jensen, good of you to join us.” Adam slung himself into one of the briefing room chairs and tried to parse whether Miller was being sincere or sarcastic. After the Glasshutte, it could go either way. He gave a mental shrug and decided to treat it as the former.

“About bloody time,” MacReady grumbled from his own seat.

If Miller hadn’t been there, Adam would have returned Mac’s snark full-force, but in front of their mutual superior, Adam contented himself with a deliberately mild, “Got here as soon as I heard.” Mac scowled, finding nothing exceptionable about the remark. That had been the point; Miller could usually be relied on to shut down Mac’s overt displays of antipathy toward augs. Adam had observed that the two men usually worked well together, but the shared command structure rubbed both of them the wrong way, and Adam could occasionally use that friction to make things a little easier for himself. Or, at least, to shut MacReady up, a benefit in its own right.

“We’re just waiting on—” the door slid open again. “Ah, Agent Gerber. We were just waiting for you. If you would be so kind?” Miller gestured to the head of the table and took a seat of his own.

“Of course, Director.” As Gerber took his place, Adam took the opportunity to make a covert study of the other agent; to the best of his knowledge, this was the first time their paths had crossed. Hantz Gerber was a slender man around Adam’s age, with hair so blond it was almost white and a bone structure that might once have been called “aristocratic”. From what Adam knew, he’d come to TF29 from GSG-9, the German federal version of SWAT. Adam had a deep respect for GSG-9; early in his SWAT career, he’d attended a seminar given by one of the founding members of the group, then in his 80s, who had patiently explained that the ideal mission was one in which the good guys never fired a shot. It was an ethos that Adam had embraced.

From the head of the table, Gerber nodded to each of the seated agents. “Good morning, gentlemen. Agent Jensen, it is good to make your acquaintance again.” As Adam looked at him in surprise, Gerber smiled thinly. “You commanded the Detroit team at the 2023 Combat Team Challenge, as I recall.”

Adam remembered it vividly; the CTC was informally known as the “SWAT Olympics”, and the competition to get in was fierce. He shrugged. “We didn’t do so hot.”

Gerber shook his head. “Fourth place was an entirely respectable showing, given that it was your team’s first qualification. But I digress.” Adam, watching him, thought it had been an entirely deliberate digression, and wondered just what it meant. The unexpected attention almost made him squirm. The man he was now had nothing left in common with the man Gerber clearly remembered—did he? No. He’d been through too much, lost too much. And yet...and yet Gerber’s words touched something deep inside him, a flicker of light illuminating something that maybe wasn’t as ruined as he’d thought.

Adam gave himself a harsh mental shake. A mission briefing was no time for maudlin woolgathering.

“Last week,” Gerber continued, “a high-level analyst at the _Bundesnachrichtendienst_ received intelligence from a confidential informant, codename SEABISCUIT, about a potential biowarfare incident in Prague, originating from outside Czechia’s borders. The BND considers the source to be highly reliable—“

MacReady interrupted, “I _know_ your brother. Stefan doesn’t even trust his _socks_ , and you’re telling me he considers this source ‘reliable’?”

Gerber sighed. “You malign him. Stefan has complete confidence in his socks. They protect him from his shoes, which are much less trustworthy.” MacReady snorted, and Adam found himself suppressing a smile.

Miller just waved a hand. “Continue, please.”

“Of course. The information was passed through un-official channels to my brother, Stefan. Stefan worked for almost a decade as an intelligence liaison with allied special forces units, hence Agent MacReady’s acquaintance with him. He maintains extensive contacts among current and retired operatives. And, yes, Stefan considers SEABISCUIT highly reliable,” Gerber explained, and Adam wondered briefly about the light emphasis Gerber had placed on the word ‘highly’.

“Well, that narrows it down to, what, _maybe_ a dozen people?” MacReady wasn’t about to let it go, and Adam found himself unexpectedly irritated at the attempt to ferret out the CI’s identity.

“Pretty sure CIs are confidential for a reason,” he offered.

“Look, Jensen,” MacReady growled, “maybe you’ve never been burned by bad intel, but—“

“Enough,” Miller interrupted. “I understand your concern, Mac, but for the moment we’ll accept the BND’s evaluation of the intel’s reliability as good.” He glared around the table. “Now, if you all don’t mind?”

MacReady scowled, but complied. Adam leaned back in his seat, folding his arms across his chest. _Adam 2, Mac 0._

Gerber pressed a key, and a picture appeared on the monitor. “Major Sergei Lermontov, late of the Russian GRU, now head of a far-right nationalist group calling themselves the ‘Liquidators’. They started to coalesce in ‘27; the United States Special Operations Command attempted a surgical strike on them late that year, but the mission failed. Lermontov’s anti-augmentation rhetoric—“ the way everyone in the room carefully didn’t look at Adam was as loud as a shout “—no doubt helped it gain membership after the Incident.”

“What happened to the Yanks?” MacReady asked.

Gerber shrugged. “We are uncertain. Intelligence-sharing with the Pentagon has become more difficult since the US caused the NATO collapse in ‘26; our request for records was denied. They may not even have them; the mission occurred not long before the Incident, in which SOCOM suffered significant losses due to their high percentage of augmented operators. We know that the team assigned to the mission was ODA-13, and our intelligence suggests they suffered one hundred percent casualties.”

Miller and Mac made simultaneous noises of dismay, but it was Miller who spoke. “So _that’s_ what happened to the Wild Boys. Damn shame.” To Adam, he added, “U.S. Alpha-team, biowarfare specialists. Some of the best in the world.”

Adam wasn’t sure if it was consideration on Miller’s part, or if he was doing a bad job controlling his irritation at having the conversation go over his head; either way, he gave Miller a brief nod of acknowledgment. “So where exactly do I come into this?” he asked.

Gerber brought up another image. It appeared to be a standard-issue Neuropozyne bottle, but Adam’s familiarity with the real thing let him immediately identify the differences. “That’s been tampered with and re-sealed,” he said.

“Correct,” Gerber said. “SEABISCUIT provided this for analysis. What you are looking at is Neuropozyne that has been contaminated with weaponized smallpox, probably originating from Vector.” Miller took this in with the stony expression of someone who already knew, but MacReady’s scar showed starkly against the sudden paling of his face, and Adam was, for the first time since his augmentation, unreservedly glad of the biofilters on his lungs and Sentinel.

“Bloody _fuck_ ,” MacReady breathed, and for once Adam was in full agreement with his nominal superior.

Gerber looked at Adam. “Forgive me if this is intrusive, Agent Jensen, but if I understand correctly, you are immune to most bioagents?”

Adam swallowed hard, but nodded assent. “Theoretically. I’ve never actually had to put it to the test.”

Gerber nodded. “The answer to your question, Agent, is two-pronged. First, you are the one agent in this office who is unlikely to be compromised in case of an accidental exposure. Second, as an augmented individual yourself, you will be able to discreetly pursue the investigation among the augmented population of Prague without drawing the excess notice that a non-augmented authority figure would.” And _damn_ if Gerber didn’t make it sound like he was a genuine asset, rather than—Adam cut that thought off at the knees.

“And speaking of, Jensen,” Miller rumbled, “there a reason you haven’t picked up your allotment of Neuropozyne from the infirmary?”

_Not that you’d believe,_ Adam thought sourly. “Wanted to finish off what I already had,” he lied. “I’ll take care of it.”

“Today, Agent.” Miller responded. “We know _our_ Neuropozyne is clean.”

Adam nodded. “Yes, sir.” If Koller couldn’t find someone to pass it on to, he could use it to buy information. In some areas, it was a readier currency than credit chips. “Anything else I need to know?”

Gerber offered him a faint smile. “I’ll forward the full data packet to your email, and make certain you’re on the distribution list for further intelligence developed by SEABISCUIT.” Adam noted Gerber’s shift to informality, but what it meant he wasn’t yet sure. Gerber _could_ be just what he seemed, a fellow professional just trying to get the job done, or he could be the Illuminati plant, and the informality just a way to get closer to Adam. (Even as Adam was trying to find the plant. It was enough to make his head spin.)

Adam’s thoughts were interrupted by MacReady’s flippant, “I’d check your garage, if I were you. Never know what kind of things are hiding in there.”

Adam sat firmly on his temper. “Was planning to make that my first stop,” he said, as calmly as he could. “My mechanic’s not going to want tainted Neuropozyne on the streets any more than we do.” It wasn’t the response he’d have liked to make.

“Good,” Miller interjected, one hand rubbing wearily at his forehead. “Keep me updated.” He made a little gesture of dismissal, and Adam managed to be the first one to the door without looking like he was escaping.

As he exited the infirmary, Adam’s enhanced hearing caught the edges of MacReady’s annoyed, “What the bloody hell did you think you were doing in there?” and Gerber’s unruffled reply, “Team building.”

_Team building_. Gerber was doing all the things Mac should have been to bring the new guy along. All the things Adam had done, when he’d been in Mac’s position a lifetime ago. Adam missed the easy camaraderie of his SWAT days, missed the feeling of being part of a team. But if he was going to find the Illuminati influence here, he couldn’t afford to get too comfortable. Couldn’t afford to _be_ part of the team. Had to be on the outside. No matter the personal cost.

He pulled his coat around him and stalked out, not caring who watched him go.

**ΔX**

Adam took the steps down to the Time Machine two at a time. He’d skimmed through the case file on the metro, and had discovered a new appreciation for his Sentinel. Motion sickness had never bothered him, but the SEABISCUIT intel included pictures, and they were enough to turn even the strongest person’s stomach. He found himself wondering what kind of person would walk into that charnel hell, not knowing what was waiting for them—they certainly didn’t lack for courage. He could admire that.

He passed the intel up to Alex while he was waiting for the elevator; maybe the Collective could fill in some of the missing details. (He ignored, as best he could, the sensation of vomiting through his eyes that he always got with a big data upload. Neuroprosthetics were funny things.) He already knew that the most glaring hole was going to remain empty—the PCR were, as usual, refusing to cooperate, and they didn’t keep detailed statistics about augmented deaths anyway. But there were other areas where the Collective could be useful. He suspected they could access the U.S. military intel the European agencies were having trouble acquiring. And if they couldn’t—he made a mental note to shoot Jarreau a secure email; Adam didn’t doubt that the former SEAL could get some cooperation, if needed.

Adam stepped out of the elevator and paused at the sight of Koller alternating between mopping up something unwholesome-looking and using the mop as an imaginary dance partner, while “Weird Science” blasted from a battered set of speakers. That was something he didn’t see every day, and yet somehow was entirely typical of what he’d come to know of the eccentric young man. (He had to admit, the kid was starting to grow on him.)

“Koller,” Adam tried to get his attention, but the music drowned him out. He tried again, louder. “KOLLER!”

Koller’s head snapped around in mid-dance-step, and Adam caught him before he stumbled into the nearby table. “Shit, Jensen, you scared me!” The music abruptly cut out. “Make some noise when you come in here, would you?”

Adam refrained from pointing out that the noise level would have drowned out a marching band. “Sure,” he said, somehow managing to keep a straight face. “Before you ask, the augs are fine. I just have a couple questions.”

_Questions_ were a sure way to trigger Koller’s anti-authoritarian streak and divert him from the deployment of puppy-dog eyes and protestations of sadness at not getting to fondle Adam’s augs. “What _kind_ of questions?” Koller asked, suspiciously.

“Nothing that’s going to endanger you or your clients,” Adam reassured him. “Wondered if you’d heard about someone dealing in bad Neuropozyne.”

“Fuck, no!” Koller scowled. “Believe me, Jensen, if I knew about something like that, you’d know, and so would all my clients. I told—I mean, I’m not going to spread rumors about it, I’m not irresponsible, but if I had hard facts, I’d be telling _everyone_.”

Adam caught Koller’s quick redirection. “You told...who...what?”

Koller shook his head, jaw setting in a mutinous expression. “Can’t say. I promised. Just forget I even started to mention it, man.”

“Koller...” Adam pressed. His sudden focus on Koller triggered his CASIE, but the readings it started throwing out bordered on the nonsensical. With a mental shrug, he turned it off; either Koller was _that weird_ (which was entirely possible), or he had some way to jam the CASIE; either way, it was useless to him. “If there’s someone else involved—“

“No!” Koller practically shouted, then lowered his voice to a frantic hiss. “Look. People sometimes say things to me, they say, ‘This goes no farther’, and they come _back_ to me because they don’t. It’s patient con-fi-den-ti-al-ity, man,” he drew the word out. “I _promised_. I’ll tell you whatever else I can, because man, that’s some bad shit, but just...don’t push, okay?”

“All right,” Adam held up his hands in a placating gesture. “What _can_ you tell me, without violating anyone’s confidences?”

Koller nervously ran one of his hands through his hair. “Okay, look, I can tell you what I told the other person. None of my regulars have gotten anything weird that I’ve heard of, and none of them have disappeared more than usual. There haven’t been any big raids lately, so…if more than a few people dropped out of sight, I’d probably notice.” He gave Adam an edgewise look, as if he was worried about saying even that much. “S—they’re really worried about this stuff. Even more than you. ‘Existential threat’, was the phrase. Didn’t tell me what the nu-poz was tainted _with_ , just that it was bad, and I needed to keep an eye out for a mark that looks like the old Chernobyl liquidators’ medal.” Adam’s eyebrows went up at the detail; Koller shrugged. “Recent history, man. Little guys like us always have to keep an eye on the eight-hundred-kilo gorilla.”

“Right,” Adam said. He scratched at his beard for a moment— _fuck_ , he missed fingernails!—and finally said, “That other person comes to you again, go ahead and tell them that I’m asking questions.” He hesitated, then added, “Go ahead and give them my Infolink number if they want it. Tell them—“ again he hesitated, considering his options, “—tell them that we might have a German friend in common.”

Koller exhaled hard, clearly relieved that Adam was being reasonable about the whole thing. “I can do that.” He grimaced, then added, very carefully, just as Adam was turning to leave, “Heyyyy, Jensen… you know the Dvali, right?”

Adam paused. “Not personally, but I know _of_ them. Why?”

“’Cause… I maybe heard that someone’s trying to cut into their nu-poz smuggling business, and they proooooobably aren’t too happy with it. And these freaks you’re after, dealing in contaminated nu-poz, might be connected.” Koller shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. “You don’t want to get caught between the Dvali and someone they’re after.”

Now _that_ was a valuable piece of information. Adam laid a hand gently on Koller’s shoulder. “I didn’t hear it from you.” With his other hand, he dropped a bottle of Neuropozyne in the pocket of Koller’s labcoat.

Koller raised grateful eyes to Adam’s face. “That’s—that’s great, Jensen. Thanks.” Adam squeezed his shoulder in brief reassurance, then turned to make his way out.

He took the back way out, away from prying eyes; it was the fastest way to get to what he’d mentally dubbed ‘Underground Prague’. He’d take a quick look around, see if anything turned up. He wasn’t by any means an expert on all its nooks, crannies and hideaways, but he’d started to get an idea of where people tended to cluster. People tended not to pay too much attention to him if he looked like he was just passing through, and his hearing was keen enough to pick up most conversations. He didn’t expect to get lucky, not this early in an investigation, but stranger things had happened.

**ΔX**

The walls of Překážka cast long shadows in the bloodied light of sunset as Adam turned his steps toward his apartment. People were definitely spooked, he’d picked _that_ up quickly enough. He just didn’t have a good read on what was causing it.

He was buying a fresh pack of smokes from the stall near the fountain when his infolink pinged. “Got some of that information you were looking for,” Alex said, cheerfully. “Ready to get your socks knocked off?”

Adam ducked into the shadow of one of the countless little dead-end alleys. He took a moment to light himself a cigarette, then replied, “Thrill me.”

“First of all, Janus is pretty pleased with you, because these guys weren’t on our radar, and it looks like they should have been.”

“Great,” Adam responded automatically. “He can tell me that in person.” It gnawed at him, working with someone he didn’t know, couldn’t put a name or a face to, especially given how much Janus knew about him.

“Doesn’t work that way, big guy, you know that,” Alex took it in stride, as she always did.

“So you keep telling me,” he sighed, and sucked in a lungful of smoke. “Go on...”

“We focused specifically on intel from the American side, the lost mission, like you asked, and found some...inconsistencies.”

Adam didn’t bother to tell her he’d just wanted to fill in the missing intel; instead he said, “Figured something that could take down an entire special operations team might need some special handling.”

“Well, good news for you, the Liquidators didn’t take the team down. Not directly, anyway. According to the records, their usual bird was already en route to Afghanistan with their replacements, and the backup was down for maintenance for an ‘unspecified problem’. Which meant the Army had to fall back on one of their private contractors.” Alex’s voice, usually expressive, went flat on the last two words.

“Belltower,” he said.

“Belltower,” she confirmed. “The ops plan was to have the team do a HALO jump from 60,000 feet to avoid air defense radar. Instead, military air traffic control showed the plane descending to 20k, well within Russian missile range. The black box was never recovered, and there were no communications from the flight indicating any problems. Kinda screams sabotage to me.”

“You think the Liquidators are part of the Illuminati?” Adam asked.

“Doubt it,” Alex responded. “What I think is that the team were too good at their jobs, and they got too close to an Illuminati op or two, so they needed to be eliminated. The Liquidators just happened to provide a convenient excuse and some useful pawns. It’s the usual pattern for them. But here’s the thing—it may not have been Belltower that caused the sabotage. Turns out there was a survivor. Kind of a coincidence, don’t you think?”

Adam frowned. “That’s a stretch, Alex. Elite teams like that are all about unit cohesion.” The kind of unit cohesion he’d worked hard to foster in SWAT, and that he was missing in TF29. The kind that he wondered if he’d ever be part of again.

“Yeah, well, remember the neighbor you were gonna check out? The one with ties to Beth DuClare?”

Adam had to think—it had been a couple months, and he’d been busy settling in to TF29; then, there had been the whole miserable situation that Picus was calling the “Children’s Crusade”, which they were still getting fallout from… “You mean Delacourt? Downstairs? Haven’t really had time—wait. _Her?_ ”

“The very same,” Alex said grimly. “Isn’t it a little fishy that the only person to survive a situation that took out the rest of her team in sketchy circumstances _just happens_ to be the one with Illuminati connections? And that she ended up with cutting-edge Sarif augs of dubious authenticity, installed, by everything we can find, by a fairly high-ranking Illuminata? And, of all the places she could go, she ends up in _Prague_ , a city that hates Augs? I mean, yeah, it could all have an innocent explanation, but the combination is pretty damning.”

Adam’s thoughts had run down the same lines. “I’ll find out,” he growled. “What can you tell me about her now?” His cigarette had burned down almost to the filter; he took one last drag, stubbed it out on the filthy brick, and tossed it in a nearby trashcan. As he headed back to his apartment complex, most of his attention was on Alex.

“Enlisted in the Army at the age of 17, got immediately tagged for Special Forces—that would have been the early teens, not long after the US first opened combat roles up to women. Assigned to the 10th SOG—they’re the ones that cover Europe, west Asia, and north Africa… She’s spent most of her career in and around every eastern European and western Asian hotspot in the past decade. Regular tours in Afghanistan means she probably cut her eyeteeth on Pakistani and Russian bioweapons labs. No real details, those parts of her military record are classified so deeply even we weren’t able to get to them this fast—but that’s not unusual. She’s got a bunch of medals, though, and they’re all classified.” Alex paused in the recitation, then said, “Too much to hope that she’s let herself get out of condition? Or is still adjusting to the augs?”

Adam thought back to the few times he remembered paying attention to Delacourt. Mostly, it was an impression of someone tall and lithe, with a surprisingly powerful build and an unnerving tendency to take the most direct route between her and her destination—“She jumps off balconies and free-climbs the walls instead of taking the stairs. I’m gonna say… not a chance.” He regretted not following up on her offer of coffee the day he’d moved in—he could have felt her out, gotten to see some of what made her tick. He had a hard time reconciling the thought of someone who’d run to help a sick child with the kind of person that could cold-bloodedly betray the people she’d fought and bled with. “What happens if she’s just a dupe?” It had happened to Megan, after all. People could be seduced into doing terrible things for the promise of a greater good.

“Turn her if you can,” Alex replied, “We can always use an asset like her. And if you can’t—”

“I don’t do wet work,” Adam harshly reminded her.

“—then let us know and we’ll take care of it,” Alex finished as smoothly as if it had been what she’d been planning to say. (And maybe it had, but Adam wouldn’t have bet on it.) Once again, he was reminded that he and the Collective were partners of convenience, and while their ends might coincide, the means they were willing to accept often didn’t.

“Don’t worry,” he said, projecting confidence to cover his unease. “I’ve got it handled.”

Alex chuckled. “Well, that’s why we pay you the big bucks,” and cut the connection just as Adam reached the courtyard. The dark-robed proselytizers for some augmented cult were just packing up to leave, and lights were coming on in the surrounding apartments. He glanced up—for the moment, he was considering Delacourt’s apartment to be enemy territory—to find its windows were still dark. Depending on how long she’d be out, this could be an unlooked-for opportunity to do a discreet toss of her apartment, see what he could uncover.

Some providence was smiling on him, because his second most-reliable source of gossip was on the stairs, chatting with people as they went by. Teresa ran the bar down by the metro, and had a kind word for just about everybody—even him. Thinking quickly, he pulled his left arm from his coat sleeve and tucked it across his chest, then pulled his coat back around him. In the twilight, it should look like it was in a sling. That done, he headed toward the stairs, more slowly than usual.

Teresa noticed. “Hey,” she called, in the sharp soprano he always found a little surprising coming from her. “Are you okay? Do you need help?”

“Had a bit of an accident,” he did his best to sound a little embarrassed. “Mechanic says the problem’s not the aug. The doc around? Figured I’d see what she said.”

Teresa’s eyes softened with compassion. “I think she said something about a delivery, and she’d probably be out late. Hmm. Funny,” she mused, “none of the pregnant women I know should be that close, but,” she grimaced, “things happen. I can give you her number if you need it?”

Adam shook his head with a forced little laugh. “It’s not that bad. I’ll see what it’s like in the morning and follow up with her if I need to. Thanks, though.” He gave her a polite nod, then took the stairs up to his apartment, remembering to maintain his ‘injured’ pace the entire way.

In a few hours, once everyone had gone to bed, he’d make his move. One way or another, he’d get some answers.


End file.
